The Turkey- Syria thread

[SpeareChucker]

He does seem to dominate their lives and thoughts.

 

[bellisarius]

You guys are incorrigibly obsessed.
Every political thread inevitably turns into a pro/anti Trump battle.

How can it end up otherwise when Lit. lets the mentally unstable participate?

 

[SpeareChucker]

How can it end up otherwise when Lit. lets the mentally unstable participate?

I resemble that crack...

 

[bellisarius]

Seriously, watching these people being letting the press lead them around by the nose is sickening. The fact is is that Trump made the least "bad" decision where there was no "good" decision possible.

The Kurd's are NOT going to be exterminated. What is going to happen is they're gong to lose their self-proclaimed "Kurdish Autonomous Region" in N. Syria. Too damn bad. I have zero interest in seeing one drop of American blood shed so that they can fulfill their secession ambitions and start a civil war over same.

 

[SpeareChucker]

They have been fighting and they will continue to fight.



It's what they do...

 

[BotanyBoy]

I can't believe I just read that fucking swill from SYK. Talk about genocide, I'm sure Saddam and his sons had the best interest of the Kuwaiti people when he invaded. I guess he killed them by the thousands because he was putting their interest first. Some People are so incredibly ignorant it's literally jaw dropping. Lefty looney toons gone off the rails and heading for the moon.

SomeoneYouKnow is obviously a fan boy of murderous psychotic dictators.

Most leftist are.

Remember how the con artist lied when he said the Kurds didn't help us in WWII

Nah...don't care, we're out finally, the Turks are slaughtering your socialist scum comrades and that's all that matters.

 

[heathergives]

Reading Esquire Magazine for news is like reading Hustler magazine for women's rights.

 

[bigsly]

The Kurds! The Kurds!

https://thumbs.gfycat.com/NewBabyishBarasingha-size_restricted.gif

Despite the continued, overt display of utter ignorance in doing so, the collectivist mindset of both socialists and statists sentences them to deem ALL Kurds the same.

 

[Aglaopheme]

This deserves to be here too.

#BREAKING:
Kurdish Human right activist & The secretary-general of the Future Syria Party,Ms #Hervin_Khalaf ,has been raped & then stoned to death by #Turkey backed Jihadists near #Hasakah during Turkey's ethnic cleansing operation against #Kurds in Syria. @brett_mcgurk #amnesty

https://twitter.com/kurdistannews24/status/1183209744384704512?s=21

 

[Rightguide]

1) Obama wanted Esad gone, Turkey joined in.

2) Obama flipped!!! Turkey stayed the course. Obama administration asked Russians to come and save Esad since they did not want to face the aftermath of Esad if he were to be removed from power!!! (Obama's National Security Advisor on the record on a documentary on PBS)
If we are not going to change the regime, and if the regime has no credible threat to Israel, why are we even there? To contain Iran against Israel through their proxies? Rhetorical question.

3) Trump wants to get the troops back home from those endless wars, and that is at least a good campaign promise.

4) Turkey is hosting 3.6 million Syrian refugees. Lebanon is hosting more than 1 million. There are about 800,000 refugees in Germany and Germans said no more by changing their votes and Merkel got a hit!!!

5) Turkey is not fighting Kurds, but Kurdish terrorists whom happens to be communists!!! There are millions of Kurds in Turkey and even in the ranks of the government (past president and ministers etc...) They have Kurdish speaking TV channels etc. Intermarriages between the Turks and Kurds, they are all mingled.

6) Turkey opened up its borders when Saddam was killing the Kurds. About half a million stayed in camps. And, they returned back to Iraq once there was a safe haven and no fly zone established for them!

7) Kurdish terrorists had been attacking Turkey from the Syrian side for a while killing civilians and it is only reasonable for Turks to defend themselves against those attacks. And, keeping the terrorists away with a safe zone seems to be doable.

8) Turkey stated that they would be holding ISIS prisoners (within whatever there in the safe zone) and also would be sending the foreign nationals to their prospective countries!!! Now that may be a problem since Europeans may not want them back!!!

Let Turkey do its own policing. Let Trump to get those troops back home!

^^^
Precisely. The most accurate statement of affairs in Syris vis a vis the "kurds."

 

[suurfer]

Yes Erdogan is a dictator, yes Turkey's invasion is bad news - any invasion inevitably leads to individual acts of atrocities.

But I can totally understand where Erdogan is coming from this time.
Btw, the majority of the Turkish population supports Erdogan's decision;
they're scared of PKK and remember the casualties on both sides when PKK operated in Turkey for two decades.

My beef is with whoever within the American admin. decided to arm YPG. THEY created the clusterfuck.
Surely they could find someone else to help them, instead of empowering a rogue organization which Turkey considers the biggest threat to Their national security?



Sorry conservative guys, but my googling points to... TRUMP?

May 2017 --U.S. to arm Syrian Kurds fighting Islamic State, despite Turkey's ire
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-usa-kurds-idUSKBN18525V

"Despite fierce opposition from NATO ally Turkey, U.S. President Donald Trump has approved supplying arms to Kurdish YPG fighters to support an operation to retake the Syrian city of Raqqa from Islamic State."

 

[BotanyBoy]

My beef is with whoever within the American admin. decided to arm YPG. THEY created the clusterfuck.
Surely they could find someone else to help them, instead of empowering a rogue organization which Turkey considers the biggest threat to Their national security?



Sorry conservative guys, but my googling points to... TRUMP?

Nothing to be sorry about.

So what? At least it was the YPG not the PKK.

 

[bellisarius]

Yes Erdogan is a dictator, yes Turkey's invasion is bad news - any invasion inevitably leads to individual acts of atrocities.

But I can totally understand where Erdogan is coming from this time.
Btw, the majority of the Turkish population supports Erdogan's decision;
they're scared of PKK and remember the casualties on both sides when PKK operated in Turkey for two decades.

My beef is with whoever within the American admin. decided to arm YPG. THEY created the clusterfuck.
Surely they could find someone else to help them, instead of empowering a rogue organization which Turkey considers the biggest threat to Their national security?



Sorry conservative guys, but my googling points to... TRUMP?

May 2017 --U.S. to arm Syrian Kurds fighting Islamic State, despite Turkey's ire
https://www.reuters.com/article/us-mideast-crisis-usa-kurds-idUSKBN18525V

"Despite fierce opposition from NATO ally Turkey, U.S. President Donald Trump has approved supplying arms to Kurdish YPG fighters to support an operation to retake the Syrian city of Raqqa from Islamic State."

Read through the linked article carefully.

The United States has long directly supplied arms to the Arab components of the so-called Syrian Democratic Forces, which include YPG fighters. White said Washington would still prioritize supplying those Arab fighters within the SDF.

As I posted before, tribes within tribes. The YPG was inevitably going to be a component of the proxy coalition. The supply of arms, etc. pre-dated Trumps decision. His decision was basically a decision to increase the equipment and training as part of the push to defeat ISIS. As also pointed out in the article this was at the pentagon's behest with Mattis being the point man.

The decision was made to make the defeat of ISIS the priority goal even at the risk of irritating Turkey. So what were the alternatives? A full blown US invasion? That too would have had many unforeseen and probably disastrous consequences.

In spite of selective critical comments here and there in the press I see no rush by ANY nation to swoop in and protect the Kurd's. Why do you think that is?

 

[LupusDei]

“In the last 24 hours, we learned that (the Turks) likely intend to extend their attack further south than originally planned, and to the west,” Esper said in an interview with CBS. “We also have learned in the last 24 hours that the ... SDF are looking to cut a deal, if you will, with the Syrians and the Russians to counter-attack against the Turks in the north.”

A Syrian Kurdish politician told Reuters that SDF and Syrian government officials have been holding negotiations at a Russian airbase in Syria with Russian participation, and expressed hope for a deal that would halt a Turkish attack.

Lebanese broadcaster al-Mayadeen said on Sunday that the Syrian army would deploy within 48 hours to the town of Kobani, which is held by the SDF, and the nearby town of Manbij, which is controlled by SDF-aligned forces.

https://www.reuters.com/article/us-syria-security-turkey-usa/u-s-to-pull-last-troops-from-north-syria-as-turkey-presses-offensive-against-kurds-idUSKBN1WS048

The bad: what was merely a truce between Kurds and Assad, now becomes an alliance. Russians and Iranians backed Assad suddenly have a chance to recapture his war devastated country in it's entirety.

The irony: Iran couldn't be too happy to find itself in coalition with Kurds.

The good...

Let me be maliciously cynical.

If this leads to proxy war between Turkey and Russia, it will have been, well, a little somewhat, worth it.

 

[someoneyouknow]

https://i.imgur.com/sZUe3cE.jpg

Huh. Who would have guessed the con artist would be helping his Russian handler get an ally in the Middle East?

 

[BotanyBoy]

Huh. Who would have guessed the con artist would be helping his Russian handler get an ally in the Middle East?

LOL well ...first off that's not a warning, that's a question.

And so the fuck what?

Do you have any good reasons, any arguments for the US being eternally involved in middle east conflict with no objectives??

Do any of the suddenly pro war lefties have any good reasons or arguments to support their desire war just for the fun of it?????

https://media.giphy.com/media/8FhXc8w45aN32/giphy.gif

 

[suurfer]

Read through the linked article carefully.



As I posted before, tribes within tribes. The YPG was inevitably going to be a component of the proxy coalition. The supply of arms, etc. pre-dated Trumps decision. His decision was basically a decision to increase the equipment and training as part of the push to defeat ISIS. As also pointed out in the article this was at the pentagon's behest with Mattis being the point man.

1. The decision was made to make the defeat of ISIS the priority goal even at the risk of irritating Turkey. So what were the alternatives? A full blown US invasion? That too would have had many unforeseen and probably disastrous consequences.

2. In spite of selective critical comments here and there in the press I see no rush by ANY nation to swoop in and protect the Kurd's. Why do you think that is?

1. Yes, I saw afterwards that it predated Trump, the decision to arm YPG was made in 2014.
You're kind of right: the war in Syria was a mess, it's hard to know what would have been the best thing to do.

My point is I'm frustrated with the press's reporting, they simply chose "the bad guys"(genocidal Turks) versus the good guys (oppressed Kurds).
Absolutely no attempt to inform us of all the angles. It's not even that it lacks nuance, Turks aren't the bad guys, neither are the Kurds.

When did the global press become so substandard? With a few notable exceptions, they're either focused on propaganda, or on lazy C&P-iing from each other.
Laypeole in forums have been doing the investigative legwork instead.


2. Good point, their behavior doesn't match theirr inflammatory rhetoric.

 

[BizzaBizza]

My point is I'm frustrated with the press's reporting, they simply chose "the bad guys"(genocidal Turks) versus the good guys (oppressed Kurds).

Maybe it's always been this way, but the press does't report the news, they make the news, or try to influence it. There is no such thing as a neutral observer in journalism, even though they wanted to be treated as such.

 

[LupusDei]

This is a good read:
https://www.aljazeera.com/indepth/o...ey-military-action-syria-191012104551443.html

In short, simply by pressuring the PYD into a power-sharing agreement with the KNC, and encouraging it to use its influence in Arab-majority regions of Syria as leverage for autonomy, the US could have guaranteed the stability of northern Syria for years to come, and please Turkey, Iraqi Kurds and Syrian Kurds simultaneously.

 

[dagdag]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=-mDVQuOT51U

A simple explanation of why, what and when and some possible outcomes.

 

[BotanyBoy]

My point is I'm frustrated with the press's reporting, they simply chose "the bad guys"(genocidal Turks) versus the good guys (oppressed Kurds).
Absolutely no attempt to inform us of all the angles. It's not even that it lacks nuance, Turks aren't the bad guys, neither are the Kurds.

When did the global press become so substandard?

When they quit being journalist and started being activist.


The media chose the Kurds as the oppressed good guys because they are radical socialists.

Had they not been we wouldn't be hearing much about any of this.

 

[bellisarius]

When they quit being journalist and started being activist.


The media chose the Kurds as the oppressed good guys because they are radical socialists.

Had they not been we wouldn't be hearing much about any of this.

And it makes for good headlines.

The Spanish-American war was essentially the work of Pulitzer and Hearst. They inflamed the US public with an incessant drum beat of Spanish atrocities. Almost all of those reports were nothing more than hyperbole based on third hand information. The explosion on the US Maine was the final straw for an already inflamed public and McKinley was forced to take action. The point here is that the press has it's own agenda and that agenda is not necessarily the best interests of the public.

Now we have Twitter. And as bad as the press is, Twitter is infinitely worse.

 

[BotanyBoy]

And as bad as the press is, Twitter is infinitely worse.

Yea....twitter is pretty horrible.

 

[dagdag]

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=rAI2QIDqFqA

Now this is a great debate on the Turkey-Syrian-NATO, Middle East overall. About 20minutes.

 

[DeluxAuto]

And it makes for good headlines.

The Spanish-American war was essentially the work of Pulitzer and Hearst. They inflamed the US public with an incessant drum beat of Spanish atrocities. Almost all of those reports were nothing more than hyperbole based on third hand information. The explosion on the US Maine was the final straw for an already inflamed public and McKinley was forced to take action. The point here is that the press has it's own agenda and that agenda is not necessarily the best interests of the public.

Now we have Twitter. And as bad as the press is, Twitter is infinitely worse.

I've read that you're not on Twitter and I'm pretty sure you weren't alive during the Spanish-American war so please forgive this giant grain of salt.